Pops...we love you : a look at Willie Stargell...and a fond remembrance of someone else

 

Once Upon a Time, a legend lived amongst men.

            Or that’s how I felt when I thought about Willie Stargell as a kid. Willie was a living legend. The captain of the Pirates. The man who molded the Pirates into his image after the tragic death of Roberto Clemente. The legacy of the 1971 and 1979 World Series championships. A founding membet of the Lumber Company. 

            Pops.

Wille Stargell isn’t Roberto Clemente. Roberto continues to be the soul of the Pittsburgh Pirates. The tragic hero. A Pittsburgh icon. Although if people in Pittsburgh took a closer look at how Roberto was treated while he played in the city well…let’s leave that for another time. And no one (looking at you Topps, you lazy bastards), other than a soused Bob Prince, ever called Roberto “Bob.”

Clemente was a legend. But he wasn’t the face of the Pirates for me. Roberto was gone for almost seven years by the time I really started paying attention to baseball in 1980. Willie and the Fam-I-Lee were the rage. Willie Stargell was in full Pops mode. He was the player that I wanted to see, the player that I wanted to be. I even practiced his batting stance with a long, yellow wiffle ball bat. Willie might not have been Clemente. But Stargell was a giant. Up and coming players, in Pittsburgh and around the National League, had to stand on his shoulders just to see how far they could go.

            I’ve talked about Willie Stargell on this blog before, but his statistics are worth mentioning again. Pops played twenty-one years in the major leagues, all with the Pittsburgh Pirates. An end of an era in terms of legacy long-term players on the team. Wille was a seven-time all-star. The NL co-MVP in 1979. A World Series MVP. The NL player of the year. A first-ballot Hall of Famer who amassed 475 home runs in his career, and probably would’ve reached 500 had injuries not plagued him toward the end. Etc. Taking all of this into account and the way Willie was revered, it made sense that he would become one of my first favorite players of all-time.

            And as a card collector, it also made sense to get as many Willie Stargell cards as I could get my grubby hands on. But as with being a kid in the 1980s, collecting players like Willie Stargell never came easy. There was no SportLots. No ComC. Being a kid with no money meant that I was relegated to getting Willie’s cards via a costly trade, or a trip to the American Coin collectibles shop in the Monroeville Mall, hoping for a deal. It meant that I was relegated to getting a lot of Willie Stargell’s cards from the end of his career, because those were the ones that I could afford. Anything older was unfathomable to my consistently empty pockets. Not that cards from that era were any kind of a slouch. 

To see older Stargell cards, funky 1970’s bearded Willie, or fresh-faced Willie from the 1960s, meant that I had to pour enviously over some older kid’s collection, or to view them under glass at a card show or local LCS. I had to wait until I got a bit older, and was able to buy some of those cards on my own. Or trade for them when I was able to build up my collection so that it included various older cards of the same value.  Being a kid during the inflated value of Junk Wax Era cards, also meant that I could pull cards like a 1987 Topps Bo Jackson and actually trade some kids for cards from the 1960s and 1970s. It was a strange economical time to be in the hobby.

That said, here are some of my favorite Stargell cards from the 1960s to mid-1970s.

When I got back into getting back into collecting, for medicinal purposes in 2019, I had to decide what kind of a collector I wanted to be. I’ve gone into this in past posts, but I was never a set builder. My view on getting back into collecting is that I would come at it from the perspective of someone who built sets and didn’t collect individual cards. That frame of mind lasted until I ripped my first packs of 1987 Topps and pulled a Bobby Bonilla rookie card. Then I wanted a PC.  Willie Stargell cards absolutely had to be a part of that.

The first Willie cards that I found were at a flea market in Pittsburgh in December of 2019. Living in New York City, there aren’t many cards shows to attend and not many LCS that cater to older cards. So I didn’t have much of chance to look through stuff from other eras than the present one. At that flea market I remember thinking how cool it was to be sifting through cards again. I went there with my younger brother. It was like we were kids again. But kids with actual cash in our pockets. One of the places in the flea market had a $1 bin full of Pirates, Steelers and Penguins cards. 

I got this one for .50 cents:

At the time my thinking was that I’d be able to build Willie Stargell’s entire career at flea markets and card shows. I say NYC is a baren wasteland in terms of card shows, but we did have a small one in Midtown that you could go to every second Saturday. My brother and I made plans to go to the National in 2020. Big plans. Go to Atlantic City. Buy some cards. Take a side trip to Philadelphia for a Phillies game. Come back home and see the Yankees or the Mets. But we all know how 2020 went.

Sigh.

Instead of making the flea market and card show rounds, like some newly crowned debutant, I spent months stuck indoors or running away from people in grocery store. I went on epic quests for toilet paper. I listened to sirens wail up and down my Brooklyn Street for weeks on end. My wife and I watched the death count rise, and fear for our lives and the lives of our families. Fear became a lifestyle choice.

I did collect. The hobby was on the cusp of exploding in those early Covid days, but older stuff was still reasonable. I started buying a lot of Junk Wax. I started putting together sets  from that era that I wasn’t really into. No offence 1991 Donruss and 1989 Fleer. I forgot about buying individual cards because, other than in person at card shows, I really didn’t know where to buy them. I wasn’t following a lot of collectors online yet, so I was pretty much navigating the hobby on my own. Until I came upon THIS YouTube post by the fellows at Up North Card Collectors.

I’ve admitted here that I don’t like to make online purchases, and that I have a lot of anxiety with using my credit card. But necessity being the mother of invention, I started using ComC to buy some of the singles that I so desperately wanted and thought that I was going to find at those now lost flea markets and card shows. And episode of Hobby Quick Hits by John Newman keyed me in on SportLots. I suddenly had trustworthy places where I didn’t have to feel so nervous buying cards. So I did. And I bought a lot of Willie Stargell cards.

By May I had pretty much bought his base cards from every year and company save this one.

A purchase like that was going to take a lot of nerve on my part. I’m still not ready to make that purchase. I was like that kid who ate all of his Halloween candy in one night, and wondered what was next? What was left to buy? Where in the hell was I going from here?

Enter post-playing career cards.

I’ve said it before on here and I’ll say it again. I love…LOVE…card designs that feature players who were never on those actual cards. And my love is not just for the cards of Willie Stargell that are like that. Show me a Hank Aaron card in the 1979 design and I’ll melt. 

Willie Mays doused in the gold of a Topps 2002…yes please. 

Babe Ruth? The Bambino? The Sultan of Swat? On a 1993 Topps? 

Yeah it might not be his 1936 Goudey card. But I’ll take it.

And the Willie Stargell search continues.

Once Upon a Time, a legend lived amongst men. 

On March 6, 2020, my wife and her sisters lost their gentle and kind father, my niece and nephews lost their grandfather, my mother-in-law lost her beloved and loving husband, and I lost my-father-in-law…and a good friend. To articulate my feelings, it still feels too raw. But I knew I was going to write about Big Ron Malinenko at some point on this blog. It was only when my wife and I were reminiscing about him the other night that I decided an upcoming blog post about Willie Stargell would be as good a time as any.

You see, there’s a bit of a small connection between Big Ron, Willie Stargell and I. Ron died on March 6^th, on what would’ve been Willie Stargell’s 81^st birthday. Willie died on April 9, 2001, on what was then my 27^th birthday. Granted it’s not much in the way of a connection, but my wife said that her dad always found tidbits like that to be interesting and entertaining. So I include those facts for Big Ron.

What is there to say about a man whom I’ve known and loved for twenty-three years? Well…a lot. Ron was kind and Ron was gentle. I’d never once seen him angry, except jokingly at A-Rod. Ron was patient. Boy, was he patient. I’m impatient to a fault, but around him I felt like I could be patient. I felt calm around Ron in a way I never felt around anyone else.

Ron was quiet and sincere. I never felt bullshitted around my father-in-law, and I never felt the need to talk to fill in the gaps between conversations. You didn’t have to talk around Big Ron. He and I spent years silently watching bad movies (yes, we sat through Charlie’s Angels 2), and countless Yankees games. So many Yankees games that Big Ron Malinenko did the impossinle…he made this Rust Belt, Steel City kid…a Yankees fan.

Yeah, that’s right. I’m a goddamned Yankees fan. I think Derek Jeter is the best. I think Mickey Mantle belongs on Mt. Rushmore. I maintain a moment of silence every August 2^nd. I think I understand the psyche of Billy Martin. I overlook ridiculous grooming policies. I worry about the health of Aaron Judge. I think Bernie Williams is a very talented musician. I have an unreasonable hatred of the Boston Red Sox. If I could find a Reggie bar, I’d eat it. I think A-Rod belongs in the Hall of Fame. Sue me. I’ve been watching the Yankees since 2003 with my father-in-law. And watching actual winning baseball can be infectious. 

One of the things that I wanted to do after this pandemic was over, or at least when my wife and I were vaccinated, was to watch a Yankees game with my father-in-law. I wanted to go to that apartment that my in-laws moved to in Buffalo to be close to their awesome grandkids, try not to spill red wine (again) on their white couch, and just sit back and watch the Yankees with Big Ron. I wanted to break our peaceful silence to complain about Gary Sanchez, and then cheer for him when he proved us wrong. I still can’t comprehend that that isn’t going to happen. My wife is fully vaccinated. I have my first shot. Christ, we got so close. So goddamned close.

I don’t want to dwell on sadness here. We’re doing enough of that in our own home right now. What I want to remember is one day in the summer evening 2007 that Big Ron made very special for me. He took me to a Yankees game. Just the two of us, father-in-law and son-in-law.

Memory is a fuzzy thing. As I always remembered it, we went to the game on the evening that Roger Clemens announced that he was coming out of retirement and rejoining the Yankees. But that memory is wrong. Roger Clemens announced his return on May 6, 2007…a Sunday. Ron and I went to the game on a weeknight. Why did I think it was that specific moment?

I realize now the May 6, 2007 game we watched at my in-law’s home back in Monroe, New York. That game happened two days after my wife and I moved in with them, while we looking for librarian jobs in New York City. Minus a coast to coast car ride ala Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac, we spent the summer in their basement. The Clemens return game was probably the first Yankees game of the year that Big Ron and I sat down together to watch that season. A memory in and of itself. But it wasn’t our game.

Sadly, I don’t remember the specifics of play, or the actual date other than summer of 2007. But I do know that Big Ron made it special. I remember picking him up at his Post Office station in New City, watching in the office as Ron finished up work, joking with the other guys on his shift, as he was apt to do. I remember taking the ride into the city, the way Manhattan bursts into view from over the George Washington Bridge. 

I remember Big Ron taking me into The Bronx before the game. We drove around the old neighborhood that he grew up in, passing places that existed and places that no longer did, as Ron told me stories of being an immigrant kid transplanted in the big city.

Then going to the stadium. Old Yankee Stadium. 

Ron and I had burgers in one of those stadium restaurants that you had to get tickets to go into. The place was loaded with Yankee memorabilia. Then we went to Monument Park and paid our respects to the ghost of Mickey Mantle. Somehow Big Ron had scored us seats on the second level behind home plate. It’s the closest I’ve ever been to the field in Yankee Stadium. I remember Ron pointing down to field level seats on the first base side. He told me that where his father-in-law used to sit when he came to Yankees games. Then we had a beer and sat back and watched the game. 

It’s the stuff like that you hold on to.

I had the best time at that game. I don’t know if I ever really told Big Ron how much it meant to me. Now, I just hope that he always knew.

Thanks for reading. Happy collecting.

NEXT FRIDAY:  I'm going to talk about how I dabbled in collecting again between the years that I stopped in 1992 and when I got back into it in 2019. About how my anxiety and my own sense of self stopped me from getting back into the hobby much sooner than I did.